Not The BBC News: 13 September

A divorced vegetarian mother who denied her husband access to their five year old son for a year on the grounds that the boy might eat meat has been told by a judge to grant her ex-husband access, and warned that this is her last chance to remain the boy’s primary carer.

A court case has begun against computer hackers who are alleged to have stolen over ₤1 million from victims’ bank accounts. Victims received emails in 2010 purporting to be from a well-known recruitment firm, offering jobs at Harrods. But when recipients tried to download an application form, they also unknowingly downloaded password-stealing software.

The Royal British Legion’s proposal to distribute poppy seeds for planting to mark next year’s 100^th anniversary of the outbreak of World War One has been funded by B&Q after having its application for a ₤93,000 grant rejected by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The HLF blamed a high level of applications, but it has emerged that not only has the HLF granted  ₤100,000 to the Peace Pledge Union to “raise the profile of conscientious objectors during the war”, it also actively approached the PPU to encourage them to submit a bid to the HLF.

A long-running disagreement about revenue allocation in rugby union’s European competition, the Heineken Cup, has led to English and French clubs proposing a new breakaway European competition. Also in rugby union, England and British lions forward Tom Croft, who recently returned to competitive rugby after breaking his neck in three places, has been rules out for the rest of the season with a cruciate ligament injury.

Public sector chaplains in Scotland who disagree with gay marriage may face legal difficulties, the Faculty of Advocates has warned, because the Scottish Gay Marriage Bill has no protections for freedom of conscience. A minister has already been removed from his post as a police chaplain because he expressed opposition to gay marriage on his blog; Strathclyde police told him that he could hold his beliefs in private, but to express them publicly was a breach of their equality and diversity policy.

Some Irish politicians who voted for the country’s new abortion law, which allows abortion at any stage of pregnancy if the mother threatens suicide, have complained that they are being denied Mass at their local Catholic churches. It is a requirement of Catholic canon law that legislators who vote for abortion be ex-communicated, but Ireland’s bishops have yet to make an unequivocal statement on the issue. Some politicians, including Prime Minister Enda Kenny, have been flouting the ban by attending funerals where the priest is unlikely to want to risk upsetting the grieving family by denying Mass.

And finally, the book Fifty Shades of Grey is setting another record as the book most frequently donated to charity shops, displacing Dan Brown from the position that he has held for the past four years. “For every copy that we sell,” said a spokesman for Cancer Research UK, “we get two donated.” The books cannot even be recycled because of the glue that is used on the spine. A website called “Fifty Ways of Killing Fifty Shades Of  Grey” has been set up to suggest creative ways of disposing of the book.